by Jason Brant
The screech of metal on metal kicked Lance out of a dream that faded from memory within seconds.
He awoke in semi-darkness, the television providing the only light in the apartment. The taped curtains turned his place into a tomb. People chattered outside, audible because of the dearth of traffic.
Lance stretched in the chair, wincing when the skin on the bottom of his foot shifted. He got out of the recliner and hobbled to the window, peeling back a section of tape.
A group of people stood around a car on the other side of the street. Most of them were armed with bats and kitchen knives, casting wary glances up and down the road. Several men stood around a large SUV, the hood propped open, pointing at the engine. Others pushed a car away from the back of the big vehicle, its door screeching along the side of a truck as they moved it into the street.
The sun crested over the corner of the U.S. Steel Tower. Lance held a hand up to cut down on the glare as he watched the people fill the SUV with bottles of water and bags of potato chips. Two children walked down the front steps of the building across the street, holding their mother’s hands.
They climbed into the backseat of the vehicle, followed by the women. The men closed the hood several minutes later and a few hopped inside, closing the doors. The rest of the people went to another SUV in front of it and got in. The two-vehicle caravan eased into the street and disappeared around the next corner.
Lance wished them luck, but he knew the trouble waiting for them as they tried to escape the city. He didn’t know if the military had started destroying some of the bridges leading out of the burgh, though he figured it would only be a matter of time.
A freshly infected child stumbled from an alley beside the apartment building, her skin already ashy and thinning.
Lance resealed the window, fighting against the emotions surging through him at the sight of the young girl. How many children died yesterday? How many more would suffer horrible deaths in the coming days?
He changed the television channel to KDKA, the local CBS affiliate. A map of the city filled the screen with arrows pointing to a few spots around the I-76 and I-79 beltway. Another marker hovered above Heinz Field. Large X’s covered major highways and bridges. How they planned to funnel several hundred thousand people through three sites, Lance didn’t know.
He could only hope that they’d been able to get more organized at the evacuation points than they were at the hospital. Granted, no one could have anticipated this level of craziness.
Someone walked by the door of his apartment, their voice booming.
“Way to bring attention to yourself,” Lance muttered as he limped to his kitchen.
Quite a few people remained in his building, but Lance didn’t know if that was good or bad. Having the place to himself might be safer. Then again, hearing other people, rational people, frightened as they were, gave him a small level of comfort. That didn’t mean he planned on dealing with them, however.
People are dangerous when they’re frightened.
A quick inspection of his cabinets and refrigerator confirmed what he already expected—his food rations were dangerously low. A few more eggs, some questionable lunchmeat, and a small amount rice and bread remained. He didn’t think he could live on spices, but he might have to give it a try if he didn’t find more food soon.
The thought of checking out the Giant Eagle down the street made his stomach do flips. Even if the left side of his body wasn’t sore and his foot didn’t have a puncture wound, he wouldn’t want to go down there. The amount of people looting the place, fighting over who had the right to steal the food, was enough to keep him away.
If he had a gun, he might consider it. Going in there with a knife and a severe limp was a recipe for disaster.
He considered breaking in to his neighbors’ apartments to scrounge for food, but he feared some of them might be hiding inside, armed with shotguns. Getting shot was low on Lance’s list of priorities.
The internet still worked, shockingly, so he settled back into the recliner with his laptop. The blogosphere buzzed with reports and pictures and conspiracy theories. Some people thought the plague was a false flag event that went awry. A disease designed by the United States’ government to instill fear in the populace, but which ultimately turned on its master like Frankenstein’s monster.
YouTube and Facebook were rampant with videos and pictures of the infected attacking family members and breaking down doors. Lance’s eyes darted to his homemade barricade, praying it would hold if something came knocking.
Normally, YouTube would have censored such violence, yet the videos remained, making Lance wonder if anyone remained at the controls. Fox News’ site never loaded, a 500 Internal Server Error message filling the screen.
As far as Lance could tell as he browsed around, most of the major U.S. cities had massive amounts of infection. The sparsely populated center of the country had far less of a problem than the coastal cities. Evacuations had started in over thirty areas so far, with New York City leading the pack. It would be easier to cut off access to and from an island, than a sprawling city like Pittsburgh.
The death toll estimates ran the full gamut. The range started at fifty thousand and topped off as high as one million. Lance guessed that number would explode over the next few weeks, particularly in the cities where the police were no longer around.
The Europeans and Australians had completely locked their borders down. Australia in particular, felt they could contain the situation because of their geography. To some commentators’ surprise, no occurrences of the Xavier virus had popped up outside of North America—yet.
An emergency meeting of the United Nations happened yesterday, but the results had not been released to the public. They promised swift action, but Lance wondered what they could do without risking contamination in their own countries.
The U.S. president flew somewhere over the Midwest in Air Force One. He would be safe up there, unless things got so bad on the ground that in-air refueling became impossible.
Did the government have some kind of underground bunker for emergencies such as this? Lance did several Google searches, but couldn’t find anything concrete. He assumed they did. Is that where the senators and governors headed now? Abandoning their constituents to save their own asses would be fitting.
The Russians were losing their shit. Crazy recommendations came out of the Kremlin, such as shooting anyone showing signs of infection or even bombing the worst of the cities. Conflicting reports said that these suggestions weren’t from the actual Russian government, but from a rogue sect in their military.
The idea gave Lance chills. He’d been considering staying in the city for a while, knowing how hard it would be to get through any of the checkpoints. Would the president consider incinerating certain parts of the population to keep others alive? If so, then Lance needed to come up with a new plan to get the hell out of Dodge.
Lance knew that governments did crazy things all the time, but he just couldn’t imagine Americans bombing their own cities. Even still, being prepared to leave at a moment’s notice might not be a bad idea.
Wanting to take advantage of the power and internet still working, Lance printed out a map of Pennsylvania. If he had to leave the city, he wasn’t certain if he would head east or west. Going inland meant a smaller population and a lower chance of infection. If he went to the coast, he might be able to steal a boat and anchor off the shore.
Maybe he could swing by the Greensburg area and check on Ashlee and Teddy.
He found his old college backpack in the hallway closet and stuffed socks and underwear into it. They didn’t have any bottled water, so he made a mental note to grab some from a Sheetz or a restaurant.
Even then, as he prepared for a quick escape if necessary, he wondered why he even bothered. He didn’t have much to live for. No one cared, or would even notice, if he disappeared. He rented a shitty apartment so he didn’t even have a nice home to die in.
Yet he continued scrounging up whatever supplies he could and packing them away. Being eaten alive, it turned out, was even less appealing to him than living his mundane life. He grabbed extra bandages and tweezers from Liz’s medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Two rolls of toilet paper went in the bag. Running out of that might be worse than having the glass shard cut his foot.
More eggs and bread. He found a small jar of honey in the back of the refrigerator that he spread on the toast.
The news continued reporting. They often stopped to talk about a few of their fellow anchors and cameramen who hadn’t come back to work. The programming looked rough, unpolished. The talking head wasn’t centered in the frame occasionally, or they looked at the wrong camera.
Shots of the evacuation points in NYC proved Lance’s theory about the difficulty of getting out of any cities. Mass chaos enveloped the areas. People shoved and prodded against the ever-growing crowd, fighting to move up just one spot in lines that stretched for miles. Concert-like waves shuddered through the army of would-be refugees.
The Golden Gate Bridge overflowed with San Franciscans. A few people tumbled over the side, dropping end over end to the waters below. The swelling crowd pushed more people to the brink of falling. CNN switched away from the site as a dozen civilians fell to their deaths.
Gunfire crisscrossed the skies of Philadelphia as a helicopter strafed a wide street, peppering a small group of translucent-skinned people.
Lance checked the windows often, surprised by how many people he saw milling about. Only a few of the sick came by. Small groups of scared citizens often struck them down. Their blood flowed into gutters and grates, their bodies left where they fell.
The lack of infected took Lance off guard. Maybe things weren’t as bad as he thought.
A Pentagon official appeared on the TV two hours later, concurring with what Lance noticed.
“…a noticeable decrease in the amount of sick today. We think they’re crawling away and dying somewhere. The disease appears to have a lifespan of four or five days before the subjects pass away.”
The pretty blonde that Lance grew accustomed to had been replaced by a middle-aged bald man. He lacked the grace and fluidity in his reporting style that his female counterpart possessed.
“But where are the bodies?”
“We’ve found several in the streets. We’re getting reports that some have died in their homes.”
“We’ve seen those reports as well, but the number of bodies found isn’t anywhere near the number of infected. How do you—?”
“I understand your concerns, but we have recon teams operating in every city looking into it. We have every confidence that this is already winding down. The Xavier virus is burning itself out inside of a week. Starting tomorrow, we’re going to move back into the cities and begin the long, arduous process of restoring order. Hospitals will go online within a day or so.”
The reporter sat at his desk, stunned. “It’s over, just like that? What appeared to be the end of civilization as we know it, has killed itself off?” The man’s throat worked. “What steps should people take now? Is evacuation still necessary?”
“No. In fact, we’re ordering people to turn around and go back—”
Lance stared at the ceiling. So that was it. The threat was over.
He heard the occasional cries from outside, but they were sporadic.
The television stayed on as he drifted off again, falling asleep before the night arrived.
The gloom and doom that dominated previous reports fell away as people began to perk up, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
No one expected what came at nightfall.
Chapter 11
